Waiting on Time

We sometimes give out on waiting for God to act.  Anyone who doubts it should ask Abraham and Sarah.  Or, maybe ask Noah as he sat for all those long days and nights in a boat filled with animals.  Certainly the Hebrew people learned about waiting while they were in Egypt and then again while in the wilderness.  And, of course, sometimes the waiting ends in ways not considered desirable.  Ask some of the ones who have been martyred for their faith.  What seems more obvious than we would like for it to be is the reality that God never really seems to be in a hurry.

 

Knowing this truth about God has not kept us from doing our own version of trying to speed up God.  Our prayers are filled with petitions that speak more of timeliness than patient waiting.   What we want and seem to need is not something that is pressing our future, but pressing into the present moment of our life.  It is always the present moment of our life where we want God to act and to act now.  The Word may teach us over and over again that God is not one to be hurried because we want our future now, but it is a truth we have always been slow to embrace. 

 

It is not only the Word which teaches us to wait on God, but all of creation.  Nothing about the creation God has put in place around us seems in a hurry.  While the slowness imbedded in creation may seem irrelevant, it is for others a means by which we catch a glimpse of how God is at work in the world, and, therefore, in our lives.  As the cold settles over the ground and all that was once green has turned to deep shades of brown and as the foliage which was once so full in the air is now waiting on the ground to become part of the dirt again, so it is with God being at work in the things that touch us.  His plan continues without any awareness of the human clock.  Instead, it works according to how it is that He can bring about the  best possible good in our lives.  And, sometimes it just takes time.